PRICE OF DISRUPTION: The closure is expected to cost the travel industry millions of pounds and would likely trigger a fight over who should pay
Reuters, LONDON
London’s Heathrow Airport yesterday resumed full operations, a day after a fire knocked out its power supply and shut Europe’s busiest airport, causing global travel chaos.
The travel industry was scrambling to reroute passengers and fix battered airline schedules after the huge fire at an electrical substation serving the airport.
Some flights had resumed on Friday evening, but the shuttering of the world’s fifth-busiest airport for most of the day left tens of thousands searching for scarce hotel rooms and replacement seats while airlines tried to return jets and crew to bases.
Firefighters douse flames at a substation supplying power to Heathrow Airport near London on Friday.
Photo: AFP
Teams were working across the airport to support passengers affected by the outage, a Heathrow spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement.
“We have hundreds of additional colleagues on hand in our terminals and we have added flights to today’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers travelling through the airport,” they said.
The travel industry, facing the prospect of a financial hit costing tens of millions of pounds and a likely fight over who should pay, questioned how such crucial infrastructure could fail without backup.
People push carts of luggage at Heathrow International Airport’s Terminal 4 near London yesterday, a day after a fire at a nearby electrical substation wiped out the power at the airport.
Photo: Reuters
“It is a clear planning failure by the airport,” said International Air Transport Association director-general Willie Walsh, who, as former head of British Airways, has for years been a fierce critic of the crowded hub.
The airport had been due to handle 1,351 flights on Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers, but planes were diverted to other airports in the UK and across Europe, while many long-haul flights returned to their point of departure.
Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said he expected the airport to be back “in full operation” yesterday.
Asked who would pay for the disruption, he said there were “procedures in place,” adding “we don’t have liabilities in place for incidents like this.”
British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle said the closure was set to have a “huge impact on all of our customers flying with us over the coming days.”
Airlines including JetBlue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Delta Air Lines, Qantas, United Airlines, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic were diverted or returned to their origin airports in the wake of the closure, data from flight analytics firm Cirium showed.
Shares in many airlines fell on Friday.
Aviation experts said the last time European airports experienced disruption on such a large scale was the 2010 Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that grounded about 100,000 flights.
Prices at hotels around Heathrow soared, with booking sites offering rooms for ￡500 (US$646), about five times normal price levels.